Signalman Arthur Titherington

Signalman Arthur Titherington, who died on September 19 aged 88, was the most
vociferous campaigner for financial compensation and a full apology from the
Japanese Emperor because of the cruelty that he and his fellow prisoners had
suffered during the Second World War.

7:10PM BST 06 Oct 2010

On returning home in 1945 after almost three years as a slave labourer in a copper mine on the island of Formosa (now Taiwan), Titherington had found that few in postwar Britain knew or cared much about Far East captives. The government's outrage in 1944 on learning about their treatment was already giving way to a policy of restoring amicable relations with Japan.

And when the Anglo-Japanese peace treaty was signed in 1952, the prisoners received £76 10s in settlement, even though many continued to suffer from physical and mental scars as well as regular nightmares. A dogged Lancastrian, Titherington lost no opportunity to remind people that he had lost almost four years of his youth in captivity. "I do not forgive and I do not forget," he would repeat over the next 58 years.

As the number of survivors declined and Japan's economic power, with its promise of lucrative markets, grew steadily, the issue was expected to fade. But when the prisoners retired from their postwar civilian jobs in the 1980s they became increasingly exasperated both by the government's seeming indifference and by the public's assumption that only those who had been on the Burma railway had suffered.

Exasperated by what he saw as the mumblings and grumblings of other prisoners' lobby groups, he started up his own Japanese Labour Camp Survivors' Association, whose members turned their backs on the Emperor Akihito in The Mall during a state visit in 1998.

On first meeting Tony Blair, he bluntly asked whether he was pursuing a policy of procrastination, like his predecessors. When the Blair government boasted of diplomatic success in winning an apology, which was followed by an article in The Sun by the Japanese prime minister, Titherington pointed out that this was only a repetition of an apology made two years earlier. What was required, he insisted, was Shazai, meaning: "I have committed a sin, for which I apologise."

Titherington then joined representatives of Australian and American prisoners in bringing a case before a Tokyo district court, where he wept in cross-examination during the four-hour hearing. When the judge ruled that there was no case to answer Titherington walked out to the nearby Japanese Diet, where he spat on the steps twice and said: "There is no justice in this country. They are lying bastards."

It was after another case was brought unsuccessfully in California in 2000 that Blair finally promised some 16,000 prisoners and their widows £10,000 each. Titherington accepted the money. But while most were at last satisfied, he still wanted a full apology from the Emperor. The campaign was not, he declared, a question of hatred or revenge but of justice.

The son of an iron foundry worker, Thomas Arthur Titherington was born at Darwen, Lancashire, on December 10 1921. The family moved to Birmingham, where he became an apprentice toolmaker before joining the Royal Signals at 17 to become a dispatch rider. On arriving in Singapore he was attached to the 80th Anti-tank Regiment, and found himself being shot at by British troops who mistook his crash helmet for that of a Japanese; he replaced it with an Australian bush hat.

As the British fell back, Titherington weaved his way through the chaos, carrying his brigadier on the pillion of his Norton 16H, delivering messages and destroying abandoned vehicles. He scrounged food from empty shops and once slept on the billiard table in a golf club.

Eventually he was hurled into the air by an explosion and taken to Singapore General Hospital, where he recovered to work as an orderly. His last job after the surrender was to hide surgical equipment in the bandages of the walking wounded before being sent to Changi jail. At first, few Japanese were in evidence; there was plenty of food; and Titherington even took part in an England v Australia cricket match.

On being shipped to Formosa, he and his fellow prisoners were told to learn six Japanese words a day and assured that they would be adequately fed for working diligently. But the three small daily portions of rice and pickled turnip proved totally inadequate for labouring in the Kinkaseki copper mine, where prisoners ended up wearing underwear and cardboard safety helmets under roofs that were in constant danger of collapse.

Titherington loaded chunks of ore into bogeys in loads that were steadily increased, then was made a driller with responsibility for laying the explosives. At the end of each day he had to climb 2,000 steps to his hut.

The guards beat the prisoners with their hands, rifles and bamboo poles for failing to salute, for singing and even for refusing to fall down under blows. Titherington took some satisfaction from hiding the occasional stick of gelignite in a bogey which might later explode elsewhere, and enjoyed referring to the guards as "Frying Pan", "Ghost" and "The Beast". When the war ended only about 90 of his fellow 523 prisoners remained, and his weight had halved to 5 stone 7lb. He managed three breakfasts on being taken aboard an American warship, and was fit enough to complete his military service.

Titherington married Iris Platt, with whom he had a daughter and brought up a stepson. Initially he joined the Oxfordshire Police at Witney, but he did not relish the discipline. He then became a local photographer. After serving as a councillor, he was three times elected mayor of Witney, first as a Conservative and then as "a bloody independent". In 2001 he was named Midlander of the Year. For relaxation he enjoyed golf and archery.

Although Arthur Titherington never wavered in his demand for the Emperor's personal apology, he had Japanese friends, drove a Japanese car and used a Japanese camera.